Home VM Server Refresh - best $100 CPU

[blckgrffn]

I am moving from my old 2008 SP2/VMware Server combination to a pure R2 SP1 Hyper-V environment and so am building a box to migrate to before I part out my old one. Performance is generally fine with the current setup but I want to migrate to newer hardware and not play a shell game if I can help it.

Currently, I am running a 5400+ x2 with 8 GB of DDR2 (4x2GB). I have already purchased 8GB of DDR3 (2x4GB) for the upgrade.

I'd like to stick to about $200 for my mobo & CPU combination. I have a MicroCenter local which tends to change the balance a bit.

Further more, this box is on 24/7 and a minimal power footprint is desired. I will not be over clocking or unlocking cores, this thing just needs to work.

I find myself really considering the Core i3 2100. It should have good power characteristics, strong singled threaded performance and reasonably good memory performance. Looking at the i3 550 at Microcenter now, I see it is under $100 and I would expect the 2100 to slot in there at arrival.

If I could get a Phenom 2 x4 for ~$100 I would strongly consider that.

Is considering a two core SB processor crazy over a four Propus AMD? Should I remain patient and see if a bulldozer quad becomes available @ $100? I'd like to sell off the DDR2 before it becomes worthless.

I have a few low overhead VMs and plan to run srcds servers from time to time that seem to favor single core performance over lots of threads.

Thanks,

Nat

 

[veri745]

If I could get a Phenom 2 x4 for ~$100 I would strongly consider that.

Is considering a two core SB processor crazy over a four Propus AMD? Should I remain patient and see if a bulldozer quad becomes available @ $100? I'd like to sell off the DDR2 before it becomes worthless.

I sincerely hope, for AMD's sake, that a 4-core bulldozer won't be available for $100 at launch.

Other than that, it seems like you're deciding between single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. I'm not sure which exactly would benefit your setup more. How many VMs are you running?

 

[blckgrffn]

I sincerely hope, for AMD's sake, that a 4-core bulldozer won't be available for $100 at launch.

Other than that, it seems like you're deciding between single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. I'm not sure which exactly would benefit your setup more. How many VMs are you running?

I was thinking of the "dual core" four thread Bull Dozer might be available @ that price at MicroCenter, specifically... I think that AMD will be calling it four core in that case, right? Even there aren't four independent cores worth of hardware there? I might be totally mistaken in my take on BD.

Four to six virtual machines, depending on the time of day/what I am testing at the moment. I think it's likely I'll be RAM limited although I am curious to see how much the new memory management in R2 SP1 brings to the table will help me out.

It seems like, based on what Intel vs AMD is like on the server side, getting an AMD processor without a lot of L3 cache would not be a great decision versus a highly clocked Sandy Bridge processor.

 

[Edrick]

I use a i3 550 for my VM Server. Not bad at all. But if you can wait, the i3 2120 will be a great CPU for this purpose and should be close to $100 at MC. For my server needs, I like to have a faster dual core than a slower quad in the same power envelope.

 

[nanaki333]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-824-_-Product
$105 shipped for an x4.

newegg also has a phenom x2 OEM for $69 if you want to try your luck with unlocking

 

[Concillian]

i3-2100 may or may not be $100, H67 tend to be slightly over $100 too. The previous i3s were over $100 at launch, not sure how long it took Microcenter to start selling them for $100.

If it's within your budget, i3-2100 would be my choice over an AthlonII x4. It's almost an AthlonII x4 worth of performance, but in 2 cores, so you don't give up a ton when heavily loaded with multiple threads, but you gain a ton on lighter usage profile performance, and it should have a significantly better power footprint too.

4 core Llano is your more likely AMD competition. They should significantly improve power profile with Llano, and speed should be more in line with Phenoms or slightly higher in terms of IPC, who knows on clock speeds at a given price though. I doubt bulldozer will be in this price range.

 

[ElFenix]

one of the 'e' line processors from AMD should be good. i know you said you don't want to overclock but what about underclock?

 

[aigomorla]

whats wrong with an X6?

You do VM, and u benifit from higher clocks, and threads im assuming?

Get a X6.. realistically, its not going to be that much different when both are set at stock.

Sure the i3 will be faster, but were talking about serveral minutes if anything.

Is those minutes that precious over an intel platform?

I would just grab an X6 seeing how there cheap, have decient clocks, do well on VM, and offer 6 threads out of the box.
Also you cant beat value / performance on AMD side.
Its just difficult, unless u want to ignore some budget.

 

[drizek]

]Four to six virtual machines, depending on the time of day/what I am testing at the moment. I think it's likely I'll be RAM limited although I am curious to see how much the new memory management in R2 SP1 brings to the table will help me out.

Get a Phenom II X6 with a motherboard for around $200 at microcenter. Maybe a bit over your budget, but you need all the cores you can get.

 

[Vette73]

You can get a X4 Athlon and board for $100-120 range at microcenter.

Or X6 + board for $200 at MC

 

[blckgrffn]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-824-_-Product
$105 shipped for an x4.

newegg also has a phenom x2 OEM for $69 if you want to try your luck with unlocking

Nice - I must have missed that my last time through. I do have a nice AMD heatsink sitting around... That's probably a little hotter than an i3 and loses on single thread performance but should run multiple VMs better. Hmmm....

FWIW, I am a VM admin in professional life and I know that six cores with 8 or even 16 gigs of ram would likely be a huge waste. I am comfortable with 5 to 10 vCPUs per core. Without running a video encoding VM or similar I would never touch some of those cores...

The turbo on the six core would be nice though and they definitely have good clock speeds. I'll check that out too... I don't like the free mobo's they had and last I checked one I would want was still ~$60, putting it comfortably out of range of what I would want to spend.


Thanks for the input guys!

 

[grimpr]

AMDs Ph2 6cores are VM champs in my book, pair them with a iommu enabled 890fx motherboard and ECC ram and you have a cheap and strong VM workhorse which rides under Server 2008, cant go wrong.

 

[drizek]

You can get a Gigabyte 880G and 1055T bundle for $205.

The board seems decent enough, I have a similar 780G one. You lose out on single threaded performance with the 1055, but I think this is a pretty good bang for the buck ratio if you want a solid mobo. Obviously, in terms of pure performance, getting the $199 with the 1090T is the best, but I wouldn't want that motherboard either to be honest. The MSI/1090T bundle for $209 isn't bad though.

The 1055 is 2.8Ghz with 3.3 Turbo. The 1090 is 3.2GHz with 3.6 turbo.

That 3.6GHz on three cores is pretty good at this price range. It's probably still slower than the i3, but faster than just about anything else.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=289

The i3 is quite impressive in single threaded benches, but if you ever need to use more than that, the X6 will shine. I don't know how much an i3 setup costs, but at this point I would say that it is probably better than a quad core AMD, even in multithreaded benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/82?vs=289

 

[blckgrffn]

Of course my local Microcenter is completely OOS on the six cores... I guess I have a bit of time to wait.

Good thoughts though - I am probably going to go Six Core or Sandy Bridge i3 at this point.

Hopefully MC gets both in stock soon...